Derek Prince - The Land of Israel Is Given to The People of Israel
This is an excerpt from: Israel and the Church: Parallel Restoration
What Peter is saying here is there is a time in God’s program when there’ll be what he calls the times of restoration of all things. Restoration I define this way, as putting things back in their right place and in their right condition. If something has been out of place, restoration puts it back in its place. If something has been in a wrong condition, restoration puts it back in the right condition. I believe the top of God’s list for restoration, the things He’s most intimately concerned in, are His people. I’ll say God has two peoples, Israel and the church. Restoration applies primarily, but not exclusively, to Israel and to the church. Restoration is the time when God puts those two peoples back in their right place.
For Israel, restoration is primarily, but not exclusively, geographical and political because God has only one right place for Israel which is the land which is now once again called the land of Israel. Putting Israel back, restoring Israel, requires putting the Jews back in their land. God gave that land to Abraham and to his descendants by an everlasting covenant 4,000 years ago. God has never changed, He’s never reneged on that covenant. One of the most significant facts about contemporary history is that God is fulfilling His covenant commitments to Abraham. Men may have forgotten the covenant, men may have ignored it, men may have set it aside, but God is faithful to His covenant.
So, restoration for Israel primarily, or initially, is putting them back where they belong. This, as I say, has essentially been taking place throughout the present 20th century. If you want a significant date you could choose 1897 as the first Zionist world conference which embraced the concept given by Theodore Hertzel that the Jews had to be returned to their land. Various governments bargained with them for alternative locations, including Uganda, but eventually the Jews turned that down. Now, the restoration of Israel is not exclusively geographical because, and we’ll be looking at this in one of our later sessions, in Ezekiel 36 God gives detail by detail the stages of restoration and He speaks about their regathering, their cleansing, the taking away of the heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh. He speaks about putting His Holy Spirit in them and then He says, «You will dwell in the land and you will be my people and I will be your God».
That’s the consummation of restoration. It’s not just geographical, it’s not just political but ultimately it’s a restoration of a relationship with God Himself. Anything else that takes place prior to that is merely a step in that ultimate direction. But the final purpose of God is to make Israel once again His own people united to Him in an eternal covenant. That’s God’s dealing with Israel in restoration. For about 18 centuries or more, the Jewish people have by and large, for the most part with minimal exceptions, been outside the land of their inheritance but it was still their land. In Ezekiel 36 God calls it, speaking to Israel, «your land» whether they were in it or whether they were out of it. Because, once God has given a thing it remains the property of those people whether they are owning it or not. That’s the picture of Israel’s restoration very briefly.